Laurie Anderson
July 9, 2010Laurie Anderson – performance artist, writer, filmmaker, composer. Jonathan Alley traces a life lived through art as she releases Homeland, her first album in 11 years.
1948 Born Chicago, USA. Studies violin as a teenager.
1969-1972 Relocates to New York, studies sculpture and art history, teaches Egyptian architecture. Illustrates cult comic Baloney Moccasins.
1973 Stages first public mixed media performances, marrying movement, speech, music and electronics.
1975 Progressing beyond downtown NY origins, Anderson’s works begin to appear nationally, the lines between poetry, speaking and singing regularly blurred, as she ponders the effect and role of language through performance.
1979 Collaborates with confrontational performance poet John Giorno and literary great William S. Burroughs on spoken album You’re the Guy I Want to Share My Money With.
1981 A 10-minute minimalist semi-spoken piece named O Superman – centred around a repeating cycle of her electronically treated voice at middle C – hits No. 2 in the UK.
1982 Releases full-length album Big Science, crystallising her image of cool, funny intellectualism in the public eye.
1986 After collaborating with Peter Gabriel, Adrian Belew and Burroughs on Mr Heartbreak, she releases multimedia performance film Home of the Brave.
1990s Collaborates with late humourist Spalding Gray, producer Brian Eno, issues spoken word album The Ugly One with the Jewels and CD-ROM Puppet Motel.
2001 Performs in New York one week after 9/11. Her O Superman lyrics, “here come the planes/they’re American planes/made in America,” take on a chilling new resonance.
2003 Becomes ‘artist in residence’ at NASA, resulting in the show The End of the Moon.
2004 Contributes to the opening ceremony of 2004 Athens Olympics.
2008 After regularly contributing to one another’s works, she marries long-time partner Lou Reed.
2010 Curates Sydney’s Vivid Festival with Reed. Includes a well-attended concert for dogs. Releases Homeland, another meditation on the US, with male ‘alter ego’ Fenway Bergamot on the cover.
LAURIE ANDERSON:
On Revolution Can you still have one? "Of course! Anytime! The world’s such a complex and troubled place now: there’s so much to react against. Another is the increased means to communicate.”
A Concert for Dogs “My dog Lullabelle is 30. She’s been with me a long time. She plays piano on one track on my new album. She got very ill last year, but happily is still with us. The dogs who came to the concert loved it and they were entertained. Their owners had never come to an event remotely like it.”
The Environment “When I was artist in residence at NASA I discovered they have a long-term 10,000-year project to green the planet Mars, so that we can all go live there eventually. Because we’re so great at looking after planets. I look at the oil off Louisiana and just think, ‘what are we doing?!’”
On Playing in Israel “In the wake of other boycotts? Hmm, that’s hard. Would I? Artists are there to reflect things that happen. I’m very interested in places where trouble is at hand; where things are being stirred up. On balance, I think I’d (long pause) … go.”
Homeland is out now via Warner. Visit:laurieanderson.com
